Thought I'd get the jump on this sucker early with my off the cuff review.

Thanks to the glory of myspace, a free screening of Spiderman 3 was shown in the city of Melbourne tonight [yes Myspace DOES have it's advantages!] And luckily for me I had hired goons to wait in line for me while I rushed over from work to get there on time.

I'll split it into two sections. The short summary, and the part with a little bit of my thoughts and stuff that happened etc. So yes there will be some spoilers. I'll keep em small though.

Short Summary:

First part kind of drags, but is ok. Middle is very funny and entertaining. End is good, but could've been much better.

Too many 'that's kind of stupid' moments to make it a perfect film, but boy does Sam Raimi really know how to play with the smaller moments, which were just great.

The Film:

So everyone would have probably seen the trailer for this bad boy. By bad boy, I mean the one and only Emo-Spiderman, a character who, funnily enough, would have related well with the 400 odd myspace slaves who watched the film with me [there were a LOT of emo-types]

Basically the film starts off with Spiderman at the top of his game. He's becoming more and more popular with New York, his girl troubles are over and he's even thinking of marrying MJ, who seems to be doing well for herself as she lands a role as lead in a broadway play. Shame Harry Osborn has been giving him cold stares and angry jaw-jutting moments, such as their 'tense moment' after MJs play.

By tense, I mean not really, but you get the idea that things aren't really right between them. Something about that evil look in Harry's eyes is telling us something is up. Really...

Of course, all doesn't turn out to be well, and in true oddball fashion, a new villain hits the screens in the form of Flint Marko, the Sandman, who we find out has just escaped from prison, and shock of all shocks, was also the killer of good ol' Uncle Ben.

This of course is all setting up Spiderman 3's theme of vengeance, and we can all guess where that leads, what with the anger-intensifying goo that attaches itself to ol' Spidey one lonely night. Harry starts messing with Peter's life, Peter hunts for Flint Marko, everyone starts hating everyone, especially the snippy Topher Grace as Eddie Brock Jnr [who is patchy, but overall great in the role]

I won't go into much more detail on the storyline, mainly because I don't want to ruin it, but that gives you the basic idea of how it all goes. But my god, the audience was hilarious.

Obviously seeing a comic book film in a packed cinema of myspace-crazies [myself included] where you see the occasional Venom T-shirt, there is always going to be some very fun moments.

People calling MJ a b***h or slut as she gets up to no good on screen [not that it was a crucial moment] or the random cheering at special moments, the audience made this film even more fun. And it was fun anyways.

Once again Bruce Campbell steals the show. I won't say how, I won't say why, all I will say is that he got the biggest cheer out of all of them, and his character was just genius.

The film itself suffers under it's own granduer: there's too many sentimental points here, and they hit with all the subtlety of a jack-hammer. There's also some rocky camera work at times, which got to me every-now and then, but they are few and far between and paled in comparison to the bigger moments which could have been handled better.

But like I mentioned, it's the little moments where Sam Raimi shines. Tobey Maguire's perfomance of nerdy ol Peter Parker has you laughing from the get go. His darker Emo moments are also compounded by the hilarity of his situation: The symbiote which later becomes Venom makes him arrogant and leads him down some dark moments of petty stupidity, but also some truly funny moments as he struts down the street thinking he is a god among men, checking out the ladies. This despite him still being the dorky kid on the outside.

I enjoyed it quite alot, despite some of the more apparent flaws in the film. Venom was criminally under-used, and realistically they could have found a way to not use Sandman at all [his character was by and large fairly useless] But all in all the Spidey-nerd inside me tells me that it was a hell of a lot of fun, despite not living up to my own Spiderman fanboy wishes [which the other two never did anyways, so I was used to it]

Some points and thoughts worth mentioning:

Since when did Spiderman know the piano?

Ted Raimi and Bruce Campbell are pure comedy genius in this.

Since when did Mary-Jane sing?

I like to conduct giant experiments on sand in a giant pit at night with no real safety precautions [well none I pay attention to anyways]

Venom would make a good nagging house-wife...

Who thought sand could fly?

Overall I give it an 8/10 based on my own Spiderman-love, but that's being generous. So far it's my favourite out of the three, which is great, and the standard hasn't dropped at all. If they cleaned up the plot holes and layed it a little less thick, this would have been a 10 easy.

So, in sum: GO SEE IT!!! It's easily 120% better than most crap out at the cinemas, and if you're a comic book fan, you'll love it if you can supress the 'that didn't happen in the comics' gene...

Sandman's character really only serves a purpose to get Peter angry, since he's the one who apparently kills his Uncle, but beyond that he was kind of pointless. The fnial showdown was good to watch, but for some reason seemed a bit out of place. You'll know what I mean...

Spiderman 3 is playing at a theater very near my place of employment. I leave work tonight at 11 and it plays at midnight. I know my wife will be p**sed if I go see it without her, but it would be nice to see it at a midnight showing and I would have enough time to grab a bite to eat at a diner.

Is it worth my wife's anger to see this tonight without her, or should I wait a week or so and see it then?

Logged

__________________________________________________________"The greatest medicine in the world is human laughter. And the worst medicine is zombie laughter." -- Jack Handey

A bald man named Savalas visited me last night in a dream. I think it was a Telly vision.

My fear is that they are gonna make the same mistake they made with x-men 3: Adding too many new charecters and not making the movie long enough to give each noobie enough screen time. Beast got a deacent sized role, but Angel and Jugrunaut got next to no time at all. Same thing with haveing 3 villians in spiderman 3, 2 being completely new. I detect dissipointment tommorow....

I went to the midnight showing this morning, not expecting a whole lot and I enjoyed it; I'll be going back to see it tonight. I'm not a fanboy (well for Batman maybe...but just a casual spidey fan) and I thought the action was great. Sure Gwen

I personally liked it better than the other two (great for a 3rd act as it has the most action). I think they balanced things about as well as they could - didn't need too much more story about the Sandman IMO (Save that for the Silver Sable & The Wild Pack movie lol -ok maybe I am a fanboy). I really liked the whole revenge and forgiveness theme - ties up the 3 really good too I think.

JJ was the bomb - laughed my ass off in every one of his scenes. Campbell, as usual, was also the bomb. And Stan Lee's cameo had the whole audience giddy.

Overall, it was pretty damned entertaining - not a masterpiece in storytelling or anything, but a great way to kick off the summer blockbuster season.

Ok, I hope that was coherent - I'm on 2 hours sleep here :)

Logged

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Sorry Skaboi, no reply in time, but in short, if you liked the other two, you'll love this one, and if you're a hardcore Spiderman fanboy who survived the first two, then you'll very much like it, but might get annoyed at how it all set out.

Oh and Clockwork, I think you missed part of your post in your sleep deprived state: Gwen is missing from your post.

But on that, her character was a pretty good choice for me personally.

JJ and Bruce Campbell easily had the best scenes of the movie, and the whole audience babbled and cheered when Stan Lee showed up, as minimal as it was.

The story was strong, but I just wished for more development of the 'bad-guys'. Alot of what Sandman did, especially near the end, didn't make too much sense [it's almost like they couldn't figure out if he was more of a bad guy or not], and Venom could have been much more menacing if they wanted him to be.

But the main 'moral' feel to the story, that is the relationship between Harry and Peter, was a great one.

Like spiderman 2, it was not without its cheesy parts. Like when he jumps infront of the american flag before the final showdown, and when he looks himself in the mirror after he gets the simbyote and makes his hair all emo-ish. (uhg...)

Shame on me, I just saw this gem for the third time, and it was at the regularly priced cienema.

As much as I wish we got more Venom, they did a really good job of balancing the three villains out. Okay I admit Sandman is kind of pointless, however I love the character, I over Church's performance, and I love the fights we got out of him. (But I will VERY painfully admit I would have snipped out this character)

In fact I would say the three actors who played the villains were the best. Grace was great, and who would have thought Franco could play a villain so well?

Spider-Man 2 felt like the best presentaion of comic book characters being put in a movie. While Spidey 3 seems like they made a movie as close to a comic book as possible. I think that summarizes the movie best.

Loved the final battle too, didn't feel out of place to me. Cannot wait for this on DVD.